


Anthophilous

by Wildfey



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: c01e095 One Year Later..., F/M, mildly angsty, pretentious nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 09:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildfey/pseuds/Wildfey
Summary: Anthophilous (/anˈθɒfɪləs/). Adjective. Feeding upon or living amongst flowers.Vax spends some time amongst the Ashari.





	Anthophilous

It is three months into their break, and Vax smells like flowers. His boots smell like fallen leaves. The Deathwalkers Ward carries the scent of herbs; oregano, rosemary, lavender and Herbes de Menagerie.

The thing is, Vax likes the smell. It’s cloying, it’s warm, it’s a million types of perfume, the scent of death and rebirth.

Vax is not generally a plant person. He likes grass, which is soft, and trees which are fun to climb and only sometimes attack him. However, he doesn’t really have opinions on plants, not in the same way he has opinions on the raven queen, or dragons, or his sister.

Plants and flowers and trees, all just more items in a world full of things, growing around Vax, but never under him. More and more in the last year, they’ve built him a cage (a sanctuary), and now he can smell them all the time, tugging and pulling him back to where he’s somehow started to grow.

Keyleth, of course, has opinions on plants. Vax can hardly go an hour without discovering those, now that she’s home, now that she’s amongst her fellow druids.

Keyleth, who smells like herbs, spices, flowers and plants. She smells like the roots she’s insisted on cultivating, her own patch of nirvana amongst the Ashari. They both know they’ll have to leave soon, but Keyleth, stubborn and sun-kissed, puts down roots anyway.

Sometimes Vax just breathes it in. Cloying, soft, warm. Keyleth plants herself in the earth and raises her face to feel what little light falls on it. Vax sees green in his sleep, and smells wet earth and dying flowers when he’s hundreds of miles away.

Even on the top of Thar Amphala, his roots call him. He walks among snowdrops, and is at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> never underestimate my ability to write nonsense about plants...
> 
> "Herbes de menagerie" is a ridiculous reference to herbes de provence because apparently the menagerie coast is roughly equivelant to France in Exandria. I'm sorry.


End file.
